🎵 I Made You Some Content 🎶

Been watching for 5-6 years now and I just wanna say the way you talk about games is part of why I want to become a game developer. It’s helped me view games completely differently than when I was 20, expect more of them, be tougher on them and even got me a funny reputation as “the critic” with my friends. But most importantly it’s made me love and appreciate them more than I ever have. I don’t know if I’d be studying animation and chasing my dream now if it weren’t for you changing my perspective on this, at times, amazing and incredibly dumb medium that is my greatest passion as a creator and person.

Daniel Drexler

Hey Chris I wanted to reach out and, maybe, provide some supportive brain-noise about your work on ES. A lot of what you talked about is familiar to me - I'm also a childless man in his 30s with a tendency towards being overly analytical. I even took the "next step" and got a masters in social science (recommended as an experience, not recommended as method to reach greater material wealth). I think one of the strongest aspects of your work is the way in which you bring your experience of 'struggling-to-understand-and-articulate' to the foreground. You're really good at noticing the experience of experiencing and trying to describe what that meta-experience feels like. I understand why you feel mixed about your early work, but I think that kind of 'rough'[1] feel where we see you figuring it out is a skill that is difficult to teach and can be enormously powerful. In terms of merit and value I think the stuff you've worked on could easily be the basis[2] for an academic career (if you wanted such a thing). I suspect that you had the talent and the insight to steer your channel into a more commercially successful vehicle for capitalistic returns, but I don't get the sense that you are interested in that and I doubt I would be interested in it either. I wish Jim Sterling all the luck in the world but I've watched maybe 10 minutes of his work. I think your work is high quality, earnest and singular - which is really all you can say about all good work. I'm glad you've come to terms with the ambitions with your early years and I'd encourage you to lean into it even more. Consider the things you made while aiming at a goal you didn't reach and if you'd rather not have made them. It's easy to end a time period at a different destination than we expected, but I've been trying for my own mental health to consider if I would be happy at my original destination. I really like Errant Signal, it's one of my favorite youtube channels and I think about your work often. We are surrounded by, to quote you, "formal systems that struggle with subjectivity or nuance" - they are chocking us to death. Your work unsettles them, pushes back against them, deconstructs them and it's good work that people should do more of. I hope, in time, you see the last ten years of not-becoming-a-youtube-star to be a story of triumphing over a system that wished to trap you to escape to a world where happiness might be possible. P.s. While watching this video I thought of the Lauren Berlant's "Cruel Optimism." You might enjoy it. The central definition is: "A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing." [1] Don't think of rough like "early" or "bad" or "yet to be perfected," but maybe rough like "full of texture" or "attracts your notice as it passes by your hand" or "feels pleasant on the bottom of your feet." [2] It's important to contextualize "be the basis" because it might suggest that your work is incomplete. That is not what I mean. It's just that academia has language and practice that help organize it and, in order to participate in those discussions, you would need to learn the cultural mores of that world. Every academic work is at least two works: the original idea and the academic armor the original idea is wrapped within.

Stephen Rubio

Just wanted to add my voice to the many who have been inspired by the show. The Errant Signal episode on Spec Ops was the first piece of actual game criticism I had ever seen, and I was hooked on the channel and the style from that point on. It got me thinking more critically about games, using Errant Signal as a framework when I didn't really know where to start with more academic sources. And, hell, the books I started reading were ones mentioned in Errant Signal videos. That got me thinking about making games, and I've been doing it professionally for 3 years now. I genuinely don't know if I would have done that if it weren't for that one Errant Signal video that kicked everything off. I really like this video, both because of how it ties into my personal history, and the overall idea of not looking at the world through the lens of a winstate. Glad to know that, after nearly 9 years of watching these videos, I can still get so much out of them!

You are one of the people that have fundamentally shaped how I view one of my favourite hobbies, and that's no small feat at all! I'm glad to support this, wherever it'll go :)

Shieldwall

Your stuff is really amazing and I always look forward to your videos. I think, the infinite growth mentality really poisons all of us, and creators in particular. There is value in doing your thing, even if it's for a more or less stable audience, or maybe no audience at all. In this case it's definitely great that you don't rely on this channel for income. Excited to see what you do next. Good luck :)

Ryan Aston

The work you do is exceptional - every Errant Signal video is an event to me, alongside the work of my other fav YT creators, like Noah Gervais, Dan Olson, Lindsay Ellis, Hbomb, Contra, PhilosophyTube, the list goes on. It's a bummer to me that you'd see any of your work as a failure when it's on this exceptional level. (Your excellent BLIPS series, for example, is similar to what we've been trying to do over on Slant Magazine, which is put a spotlight on interesting Indie titles that would otherwise not get much coverage.) Your only failure, I believe, is overestimating the audience - your kind of thoughtful, critical analysis is ahead of its time. It's taken some time, and a lot of pushback, to the point where even games journalism publications are embracing this, or any, kind of intelligent analysis. Anyway, I'll drink to you, I'll drink to your decade of doing this, and to doing whatever you want to do going forward. The idea of expanding this to movies, books, TV, whatever, is very pleasing. All the best Chris

Seconding the idea for a spin-off channel or something for more theme park content. This was fun!

Neil Polenske

I will say videogames' obsession with binary achievements has ABSOLUTELY had a positive influence in my life in the sense that it has allowed me to take advantage of...well, the advantage of that kind of perspective: focus. Having a...template to just wiping away the complexity and y'know...'do the thing' has ended up being REAL handy when life comes a'cha fast.

Jacob Geller

Happy Decennial, king

Zachary Fine

love me some content I wonder how the avoidance of win states can play into our understanding of other kinds of goals, like fitness or career goals, e.g. do x# push-ups by the end of the year or get a promotion at work. Is growth - for a person or otherwise - actually that important? Does Walmart really need to keep growing every year, or is that just the way we've structured our incentives and our lives? I guess my point is, would you have kept at this for so long if you hadn't had stars in your eyes? That's for only you to know, or maybe not know. Glad you're keeping at it, in any case. Where was I going with this again? Oh yeah, mmmm content Edit: You brought up Arrival in your golden disk video so I automatically know you have good taste, so whatever you do I'll probably watch at least some of it.

Sifferz

hyped for this islands of adventure stuff If your channel took a side pivot (or maybe via a different channel, focused at times on) theme park goofing, that'd be wonderful. At the very least *I'd* enjoy it, even if if it's obviously a bit of a risk. It's a community in dire need of effective critical voices. Nothing has made me want to get into the video essay game more than the broad media illiteracy of theme park fans.